Alltruists
Content Strategy and Digital Marketing
Timeline: February 2022 - August 2022
Role: Content Marketing Writer & Strategist
A special thanks to: Jessica Jackley, Ann Ro, and Kasey Miller, for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime to work with such an impact-driven startup.
Alltruists has a special mission: To create kid-friendly volunteer activity kits that educate, inspire, and make a real impact in the world. Each box is designed in collaboration with nonprofit partners that give back to various social issues.
I’ve always been fascinated with impact-driven entrepreneurship, and when I met Alltruists founder Jessica Jackley (serial social entrepreneur and previous co-founder of Kiva), I knew that I simply wanted to help out and learn—from the product development process to the partnerships that amplify the impact.
As the Alltruists’s first-ever intern, I worked on many different projects: user research with young adult audiences, work sessions to assemble project kits, and even product ideation for Alltruists’s climate change series. But as I worked with Ann Ro, Alltruists’s Head of Marketing & Impact, I realized that we could further amplify digital marketing efforts by launching a blog page full of content-rich articles on volunteerism, children’s development, and company announcements.
Here, I’ll be diving into how I built the foundations for the company’s content strategy practices through a combination of SEO-informed tactics, thought leadership, and creative storytelling for social change.
Telling a Compelling Story
The central goal of the blog launch is to give Alltruists a way to tell its story in continuous development. The release of new pieces of content should fit into the overarching storytelling effort, each to serve a specific purpose:
To update customers on company announcements, product releases, and other necessary communication messages.
To help boost website SEO and traffic, creating content that will index on Google and attract the right customers.
To give more clarity and color to the brand name and product for those looking to engage in Alltruists’s initiatives.
Blog content such as “What is Alltruists?” informs customers of the company’s purpose and mission.
To organize these narrative efforts, I broke down our content frameworks into the following sections:
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All About Alltruists is a content category that allows readers to better understand the Alltruists overarching mission. This includes content surrounding the social impact business model, features on the Alltruists team, and other bigger-picture pieces related to its mission.
Example Content for Publication
Introducing Alltruists
Founder’s Story: Jessica Jackley
Our Social Impact Model
Our 2022 Impact Report
Content Purpose: Customers need to know what the brand actually is. Stories like these give Alltruists an opportunity to demonstrate the impact it is trying to create.
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Product Updates is dedicated to giving in-depth context, insight, and motivation behind the drop of a new project kit line. This is a place for the Alltruists team to give a behind-the-scenes look at the nonprofit partners and the products’ impact on the world.
Example Content for Publication
Announcing our Nonprofit Partner: <Nonprofit Name>
February Box of the Month: All Pets Need Love
How Alltruists Subscription Boxes Work
Introducing <New Product Name>
Content Purpose: Alltruists has an evolving product line, meaning that content should inform and continuously update customers on the latest drops. Customers need to understand the greater appeal of each new project kit and how it can effectively teach kids a new social issue.
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Alltruists is focused on building more kinder and more empathetic humans, so this content category is dedicated to providing informational guides that will help families incorporate these values into their everyday lives. These types of content will also drive SEO engagement and website traffic since the text will draw in critical keywords.
Example Content for Publication
How to Explain Social Issues to Kids
Designing Kid-Centric Curriculum Around Empathy
How to Raise Kids to Become Activists
10 Ways to Teach Kids to Give Back
Want to Teach Your Child Compassion? Here’s How.
Content Purpose: Thought leadership material, if indexed properly in the search engine, will build brand trust for those who need it. Furthermore, we want to inspire our customers to think more critically about how they might use our products in everyday settings.
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Kid’s Circle is a proposed content series that is produced, written, and published by kids, for kids. Alltruists kids will write about their experience with volunteering, giving back, and unboxing the Alltruists service projects.
Example Content for Publication
Meet <Name of Kid>
How <Name of Kid> is Tackling <Social Issue>
Look! I Built This: Creating a Home For Those Who Need It
<Name of Kid’s> Journey Into Climate Activism
Q&A with <Name of Kid>, Creator and Dreamer
Content Purpose: Alltruists kits are co-designed to help kids learn and grow. We believe that kids are powerful in facilitating change, and this content series can give them the autonomy to express their authentic selves while showing customers the power of our service projects.
SEO Marketing Enhancements
Alltruists’s content strategy will deliver a heartwarming narrative that is bound to delight potential customers. However, for content to reach the right audiences, focusing on the website’s SEO performance will give the brand a boost in reaching the top search result within the kid-friendly products space.
In a nutshell: It’s Alltruists’s content goal is to hit the #1 spot in the search rankings, and I helped to advise and optimize factors such as the content’s meta description, alt text, and keywords.
Because this section involves back-end website information, I cannot publish the full details here. Please email me at hello@kevinzlu.com if you are interested in learning more!
Content such as “Five Volunteer Activities for Kids and Families” serves as informational guides for potential customers and is SEO-friendly with rich keywords and phrases.
Content Syndication & Distribution
Finally, when blog content goes live, I hand it off to social media marketing for syndication and distribution. Content, depending on the longevity of the piece, can be distributed through multiple channels and for various reasons. Evergreen pieces are especially effective at being recycled through the social media syndication process, as the content is relevant for longer periods of time.
Through distribution to platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, I was able to bridge both content and social media marketing together to provide relevant information to the right audiences at the right time.
Blog content such as “Nonprofit Partner: Austin Pets Alive!” gives an opportunity for us to announce and share owned content across all of our social media channels.
Truly, content is king. It provides strategic business and digital value. But most importantly, it gives impactful startups like Alltruists owned media to tell beautiful stories that inform and inspire.
The biggest shoutout to the entire Alltruists team for believing in my unwavering curiosity and ambition.